Nearly every Multnomah County school district increased four-year graduation rates last year, but three -- including the state's largest district, Portland Public Schools -- are still lagging behind the state average, according to data released by the Oregon Department of Education this week.

On the other end, Portland, Parkrose and Reynolds are still struggling to catch up with the state average. Reynolds ranked last after only 58 percent of seniors graduated on time. Though it falls 10 percentage points short of the state average, district spokeswoman Andrea Watson lauded their growth: last year, only 48 percent of the class of 2011 graduated in four years.

"We don't think that this is the ultimate growth that we're capable of," Watson said, "but the momentum is what it needs to be to reach our goals. It's been a number of years of work building up to this."

Some of that work was made possible by a federal 21st Century Technology grant awarded in 2009, which provided additional learning opportunities outside of the regular school day. At Reynolds High School, the five-year, $1.8 million grant provides tutoring and credit recovery programs for students after school four days a week. Susan McKinney, the interim principal, said those aspects and their intervention classes have helped kick up graduation rates by 9 percentage points to 63 percent.

The grant also helped the district's alternative school, Reynolds Learning Academy, though it still only graduated a third of its seniors on time. Principal Justin McCauley said they extend the school day and now have summer school to help students behind in credits. The school, which runs on nine-week terms, also takes the time to give progress reports every four and a half weeks so students know when they are off track.

A number of administrators stress that one-on-one communication with educators is a way to keep students on track. David Douglas principal John Bier says it's especially key in his building, which is the largest in the state and graduated about 72 percent of its students on time.

"We spent a tremendous amount of energy thinking about kid by kid," he said. "Even in a school our size, it really boils down to what an individual needs to cross the finish line."

A number of other administrators have also credited extra intervention classes, such as literacy courses that target struggling seniors, from improvements in completion. At Centennial High School, where the graduation rate of 79 percent represents nearly a ten percentage point increase, Principal Kevin Ricker said continued intervention courses at the junior and senior level were a "huge deal" for students who were struggling.

But Ricker stressed that work also has to happen earlier in the process. He said administrators are eager to catch struggling freshmen from the start and give them the supports early, so that they won't have to catch up later.